Melk Meisje (Milkmaid)

Wiedijk takes Vermeer's Milkmaid of around 1658, one of the most beloved images of quiet virtue ever painted and still a star of the Rijksmuseum, and quietly corrupts it. The same blue and yellow servant stands in the same Delft light, but a golden snail (a medieval emblem of sloth and lust) crowns her head, a grinning mouth is printed on her chest, and the poured milk has become wine, pills and powder. A glowing ghost-hand belonging to a hooded pig, the old sign of gluttony, reaches toward her in blessing or accusation. He keeps every ounce of Vermeer's hush and fills it with vice, and that is precisely why it bites: a saint of domestic virtue caught in the very act of becoming her opposite.